Monthly Archives: May 2012

What is a Local Church?

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From the I know, but notice the five parts of this definition:

• a group of Christians;
• a regular gathering;
• a congregation-wide exercise of affirmation and oversight;
• the purpose of officially representing Christ and his rule on earth—they gather in his name;
• the use of preaching and ordinances for these purposes.

Just as a pastor’s pronouncement transforms a man and a woman into a married couple, so the latter four bullet points transform an ordinary group of Christians spending time together at the park—presto!—into a local church.

The gathering is important for a number of reasons. One is that it’s where we Christians “go public” to declare our highest allegiance. It’s the outpost or embassy, giving a public face to our future nation. And it’s where we bow before our king, only we call it worship. The Pharaohs of the world may oppose us, but God draws his people out of the nations to worship him. He will form his mighty congregation.

The gathering is also where our king enacts his rule through preaching, the ordinances, and discipline. The gospel sermon explains the “law” of our nation. It declares the name of our king and explains the sacrifice he made to become our king. It teaches us of his ways and confronts us in our disobedience. And it assures us of his imminent return.

Through baptism and the Lord’s Supper, the church waves the flag and dons the army uniform of our nation. It makes us visible. To be baptized is to identify ourselves with the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, as well as to identify our union with Christ’s death and resurrection (Matt. 28:19; Rom. 6:3-5). To receive the Lord’s Supper is to proclaim his death and our membership in his body (1 Cor. 11:26-29; cf. Matt. 26:26-29). God wants his people to be known and marked off. He wants a line between the church and the world.

What is the local church? It’s the institution which Jesus created and authorized to pronounce the gospel of the kingdom, to affirm gospel professors, to oversee their discipleship, and to expose impostors. All this means, we don’t “join” churches like we join clubs. We submit to them.

Miscellaneous Quotes (39)

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Martin Luther on Romans: “It is worthy not only that every Christian should know it word for word, by heart, but occupy himself with it every day, as the daily bread of the soul. It can never be read or pondered too much, and the more it is dealt with the more precious it becomes, and the better it tastes.”

“Since justification is due to grace and not to nature, since acceptation of works performed in grace is grace, and since it is again grace that the merits of Christ are made ours, it is appropriate to attribute the whole Christian life to grace. And thus the claim for man, namely, that he is master over his works from beginning to the end, is destroyed. So, therefore, the origin of the works of Christian life is predestination, its means is justification, and its aim is glorification or thanksgiving—all these are the achievements not of nature but of grace.” – Johann von Staupitz

“All of human history moves forward toward its divinely appointed end under the absolute control of God.” – Steven Lawson

“We tend either to ignore the future, because we are so consumed in the drama of the here and now, or to see it as simply a continuation of our present lives, with our loved ones there and sickness and death gone. But in Jesus we see a future that has continuity and discontinuity. In his resurrected life, Jesus has gone before us as a pioneer of the new creation. Perhaps we dread death less from fear than from boredom, thinking the life to come will be an endless postlude to where the action really happens. This is betrayed in how we speak about the “afterlife”: it happens after we’ve lived our lives. The kingdom, then, is like a high-school reunion in which middle-aged people stand around and remember the “good old days.” But Jesus doesn’t promise an “afterlife.” He promises us life—and that everlasting. Your eternity is no more about looking back to this span of time than your life now is about reflecting on kindergarten. The moment you burst through the mud above your grave, you will begin an exciting new mission—one you couldn’t comprehend if someone told you. And those things that seem so important now—whether you’re attractive or wealthy or famous or cancer-free—will be utterly irrelevant.” – Russell Moore

“Many of our students come to us having been carefully nurtured and discipled in the biblical story and have already begun to lay hold of the breadth of it. Many others, however, come only with the story of the larger culture or that of popular Christian culture or with stories that invite them to see the Christian faith as being about and relevant to only their private lives—a spiritual existence that is always to be distinguished from the life of the body, the material world, and the work-a-day world of human social existence. Students are often more than a bit surprised to hear an understanding of the gospel and the Christian life that embraces the entirety of their lives, indeed, the whole of God’s creation.

Putting the issue in the most explicit terms, the scope of God’s redemption in Christ is as big as the scope of God’s creative work. The God who sent his Son to die for me is the God who created all things in the first place, and His redemptive goal is nothing less than to push sin out of every inch and aspect of His creation. I have been redeemed in Christ for a purpose: to be a redemptive agent in the reclamation of “all things.” We should not miss what is at stake here. God is jealous for his works. He surrenders nothing to the forces of sin and death. If the Kingdom of God stands for the realization of God’s good will in the world (an affirmation and living out of the way things ought to be) then the loving grace of God lays claim to all things, destroying the Devil’s work and returning every bit of God’s world—every aspect, place, and thought—to its rightful Lord.” – Mike Williams, Professor of Systematic Theology at Covenant Seminary and author of Far as the Curse Is Found
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A Preaching/Teaching Pastor

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Question: Is it really a Scriptural practice for churches to have just one guy up front preaching to the congregation week after week?

Thanks for your question. So much needs to be said in order to give an adequate answer. In fact, I would say that an entire book would be needed to do the subject justice. That is because before addressing your specific question, much foundational background material needs to be covered. We would first need to talk about Biblical eldership, its role and function in the Body of Christ, as well as elder qualifications. However, let me at least make a brief attempt to answer your question. Two points quickly:

(1) I believe the New Testament teaches male eldership. This is in no way meant to discount the ministry of women. Women have a huge and vital role to play in the ministry of the Church. That needs to be emphasized and underscored many times over.

Women are uniquely gifted and are totally equal to men in worth, value and dignity. When I speak of any kind of restriction, I speak only of eldership itself and its governmental role in the Church. God has every right to organize the Church as He sees fit and from my studies of Scripture, it seems clear that He has given the task of ruling in the Church to men (1 Timothy 2:12,13). (For more on this topic, I highly recommend Dr. Wayne Grudem’s book “Evangelical Feminism and Biblical Truth” which goes into this subject in great detail and provides answers to more than 100 disputed questions).

(2) I believe eldership is plural. As I read the New Testament, I dont see any local Church with merely one man fulfilling the task of eldership. There is always a plurality of elders.

That said, I am well aware of the fact that when a new Church is starting, there may not yet be more than one person who is qualified to lead as an elder. God is very gracious of course, and I believe He understands our need to be patient in this case. More than that, He actually commands us, through His Apostle, to be patient in such circumstances. Paul wrote, “lay hands suddenly on no man” (1 Timothy 5:22) “lest you share in his sins,” which is written in the context of warning against ordaining a young convert to leadership in the church. There are obvious temptations of pride for anyone in a leadership position and this is certainly the case when a new Christian is given a position of authority. Paul warns us against putting a novice or “new plant” (literally) into such an office.

A few years back (in 2005) I had the privilege of ministering in Mongolia where the Christian church is still very young. 20 years ago there were only a handful of known Christians in the entire country. Such is not the case today. Though young and immature, the Christian Church is thriving in Mongolia. However, at the Church where I was ministering, the Pastor had only been a Christian for six months. We need to realize, there just aren’t many people there who have been Christians for 5 or 10 years. Christian leadership is young in Mongolia because Christianity is young there.

Obviously, this young pastor recognized his need to learn all he could so that he might help those he was leading. He possessed a very teachable spirit and was making copious notes of all that our team was ministering while we were there. Yet even in this unusual situation, he was looking to bring other men onto the eldership team there with him, and with the help of others from outside, was training men for this purpose.

In an unusual circumstance such as this one, as well as in the case of a new Church starting, while having only one elder may be the current situation, it should be the vision and goal of each local church to see a plurality of elders in place. In other words, a local church having only one man in authority as an elder should only ever be a strictly temporary measure.

One of the requirements for eldership is to be “apt to teach” or “able to teach” (1 Timothy 3:2). An elder must have the ability to teach other people. This does not mean that each elder must be a highly gifted public speaker, but it does mean that he should be able to sit down with anyone and explain sound doctrine. He should know what he believes and why he believes it and possess the ability to communicate these things to others. He should be able to recognize and refute false doctrine and thereby protect the flock from the wolves who seek to devour the sheep. I believe this is what is meant by the phrase “able to teach.”
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